Huebrix Review

Huebrix, the new puzzle game from Yellow Monkey Studios and launched on Android by NoodleCake Studios, is at its heart a game of drawing lines. There’s a grid composed of squares, with the blocks of different colors. The goal? Expand out the squares, based on the number in their starting postion, to fill the entire grid. The cliche would be to say “sounds simple, right? But it really isn’t!” It’s true, but what puzzle game really is as simple as it sounds? There’s always some aspect or hook that makes it more difficult or deeper than it should be. There always is. And here, the fact that there are multiple colors, and challenging blocks to deal with is part of it. There are barrier blocks that have to be used as the end of a line, and directional blocks that force the next move in that direction. There’s also portals. Yes, now we’re thinking with portals.

The game’s style can be best compared to the iOS game Puzzlejuice (which should really come to Android at some point), in both its visual aesthetic and occasional smarminess toward the player. There are a lot of levels here as well, several hundred from what it appears. For those ready to get lost in this game, there’s a labyrinth of content. No minotaurs, hopefully. There’s plenty of variety, and the harder puzzles really are brain-teasers. And there are a lot of them. And if they’re not enough, there’s a custom level creator in there too.

The controls make it easy to go back to the exact previous point in drawing the line, though an acciedental touch can also erase much hard-earned progress. While the normal reaction would be to just say “just draw it again” the problem is that because there’s often complex paths involved, it’s sometimes not that easy. Just be careful. Also, the game is probably best enjoyed by not going at a linear pace. The starter levels introduce much of what is needed to know to play Huebrix, but at that point it’s better to go and find a set of levels with difficulty that’s satisfying to play on, and bounce around from there. It’s just a lot more variety. Also, an easy way to reset the timer to zero when going for medals, without having to go into the pause menu, would be most welcome.

Huebrix’s massive amount of content at a cost of $1 is an absolute steal for those who want a puzzle game that can potentially bring them a lot of opportunities to swear at how difficult that one @$#$#@ puzzle is!

Huebrix Review Rundown

8

Graphics/Sound - Very crisp and clean interface, even if it does skew a bit close to Puzzlejuice on iOS.

7

Controls - Drawing paths for the squares works well enough, though it's very easy to wind up accidentally erasing a path.

8

Gameplay - It's extremely challenging, with plenty of variety in the puzzles.

10

Replay Value - Hundreds and hundreds of puzzles, and the ability to build even more.

Carter Dotson, editor of Android Rundown, has been covering Android since late 2010, and the mobile industry as a whole since 2009. Originally from Texas, he has recently moved to Chicago. He loves both iOS and Android for what they are - we can all get along!